Suicide at Burning Man

Geez…what’s going down on the Playa this year?
First, an arsonist torches the Man before his time, and now this.

It seems a guy hanged himself inside a two-story tent, making him the first suicide in the festival’s 21 years. Very, very sad. It hasn’t been posted on the festival’s official site yet, so who knows.

Having covered Burning Man twice for the P-I (19992004) I can say that the festival is an overwhelmingly positive experience. Those who disparage it without going to the desert and seeing the crazy scene for themselves just have no idea what they’re talking about.

The festival is also a very inclusive environment (that’s right, bankers rub elbows with starving artists who scrape all year to get there), which means that depressed and disturbed people can be part of the mix. It’s kind of like, oh, the rest of the world in a sense, where bad things can happen.